


was it for this / was it for this / was it for -

by clytemnestras



Series: fem feb 2021 [9]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2021, Prophecy, Prophetic Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29429394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: It's an old story -
Relationships: Cassandra/Clytemnestra (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Cassandra/Helen of Troy (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Series: fem feb 2021 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132580
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22
Collections: femslash february music fest





	was it for this / was it for this / was it for -

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nereid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/gifts), [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> for the prompt at [the femslash february music fest:](https://elasticella.dreamwidth.org/38276.html)  
>  _We're not in love  
>  We share no stories  
> Just something in your eyes_  
> -Alan Walker's Darkside
> 
> And the ficathon prompt:  
>  _on top of being a woman  
>  i am scared  
> and  
> ethereal  
> and  
> there are seven worlds in my eyes  
> i’m accessing all of them at once_
> 
> Title from Agamemnon, trans. Anne Carson:  
>  _“KASSANDRA : Look the cup of my pain is already poured out why did you bring me here was it for this was it for this was it for—”_

It's an old story - 

Cassandra's damning act is being beautiful, the same as it is for so many tragic women. She is a beauty that calls down the gods and that's a powerful thing, a thing enough to wake a hunger that feels like desire but rests somewhere higher, up in the guts. She is a beauty that calls down the gods, because they are hungry, too, and thinks _what girl is big enough to house a god inside and keep him well fed on the meat of her?_

She is a beauty that enrages the gods, and when she turns her chin he turns it back, kisses both of her eyes, and she sees what is as yet unmade, a million dark stars all burning within her. 

_They won't believe you,_ he tells her. _Why would they? Who are you but a girl with a liar's tongue?_

Cassandra spurns Apollo the way the moon does, a face turned toward the night but still struck by his unrelenting colour, and Apollo spurns her like the sun, an ever-present burning.

  
  
  
  
  


It's an old story -

Helen's damning act is being beautiful, the same way it is for too many tragic women, and Cassandra does not see her through her own eyes but ones with the faint touch of familiarity, a quiver of shared blood. 

Helen is coloured rosy, covered over in a golden veil, a glimmer of godliness swaddling her petiteness. Hands which do not belong to Cassandra grab her and cling tightly, but she can feel the softness of that skin give beneath the touch.

Helen moves her golden feet, and cities crumble beneath the shadow. Cassandra wakes up shivering, but all her skin is warm.

  
  
  
  


It is not fury which keeps her buzzing, keeps the name _Helen_ and the word _war_ entangled on her tongue when she pours honey into her brother's ears. To one, the name is a warning, to the other, it's nothing but a promise.

It is not fury that wakes her in the night, Helen's soft skin a memory between her teeth. She can make it taste like fury, though, can carve it into that shape so she cannot name it something else. 

When the waters roll in against the sand, the people cry out in euphoria, a perfect trophy, a perfect wife for the country to covet. Cassandra cries out, too. She cries as she tears the veil from Helen's eyes, the gold undone, only the girl remaining. 

Cassandra cries, because Helen is more beautiful unblurred, her pain cracked open, her body the site of some unholy war. In another story, she would tip her royal head forward and brush their mouths, claim her for their land herself, kiss that mouth until it no longer drooped with homesickness.

In this one she tears at Helen's golden hair. _If she weren't so beautiful,_ Cassandra thinks, _this would be no story at all._

  
  
  
  
  


Helen cries in the room beside hers, when Paris is pacing the perimeter, the touch of victory that is his prize almost too much to comprehend. Cassandra _sees_ before she sees her, the way her proud little chin dips in privacy, the way the tears roll freely down her cheeks. 

She steps softly into the room and runs her hand through that hair, and Helen stiffens, knowing how harsh her hands can be. 

"You're too beautiful," Cassandra tells her, her voice too knowing, her mouth too sweet. "They can't handle the power that has over them, so they have to make you into something else. A trophy, a battle line, something to conquer before you can conquer them."

Helen looks at her, her eyes bloodshot, her mouth a red blur. "I should make myself a temple to Aphrodite," she says, a harshness to her tongue, a language she's not comfortable with still dripping like honey. "If I'm so beautiful. Let them touch the wrath of the goddess who keeps war as a lover. I can be the war if men's hearts are the spoils, still pulsing in my hand."

Cassandra touches her cheek, her chin, tilts her face up to the light. Her eyes burn inside her skull. "The gods aren't so loving, either, not if you can't fulfill their prayers." 

Helen touches her wrist and squeezes around where her pulse beats hardest. "You're beautiful," Helen tells her. "How horrid a thing to be."

Cassandra's skin all feels aflame. "You're knowing," she tells Helen. "That's horrid, too."

  
  
  
  


Cassandra is crying in a room that is not hers, sometime, her eyes ringed lightly with time or trauma. A hard-eyed woman lingers in the doorway, pity in her eyes, a knife behind her back. 

She looks lovely, she looks pained, she looks almost sorry for the way things will end. 

Cassandra wakes up, alone in the dark. Thinks, _how lovely to know the hand that will take your life is a soft one. How lovely to know the certainty of unknowing dark once more._

  
  
  


They come in their toy, their wooden horse, all piled in and atop each other. The warmth must be unbearable. The smell far worse. 

She knows it means nothing, and she knows that she will be stopped, she knows in this story she's a caution and not a prophet.

Cassandra takes up the axe and the torch anyway, holds them high, a cry in her throat. The mad woman screams and screams again.

  
  
  


It's an older story -

Iphigenia's damning act is being pure, which is like being beautiful but on the unscarred skin of the soul. 

Iphigenia's damning act is being the child of hubris, his nails thick with the blood of animals slaughtered as if that proves heroism or something God-like. 

What does it matter if he sobs as he does it? What does it matter if his hand shakes around the instrument of death that spills half of his blood into the mouth of a hungry goddess? 

Iphigenia raises her throat to the axe, smiles at her father as he unmakes her, a softness she will never grow out of. 

Agamenon washes his hands over and over in the river, but Cassandra knows they will not come clean, not even when he clasps them around her own throat. It's always an exchange, one fragile creature for another. 

  
  
  
  


She tells this to Helen, her head pillowed on her soft thighs, both of them struggling for sleep with the sound of war outside. 

Helen digs her fingers harshly into Cassandra's hair. "We are mirrors," she tells her. "You are crossing into my place, the trophy and the spoil."

"No," Cassandra tells her. "I am a sacrifice, a lamb-girl bleating at the sky. Something with a voice but without language."

Helen braids her hair until it looks like horns. They laugh into each other's mouths until both are heaving with hysteria, bodies sweating, tongues mad.

  
  
  
  


It's a different story - 

Clytemnestra's damning act is marrying a man who would rather seat his fatherhood at the apex of a country than in his homestead. 

She seethes where she sits in her palatial home, lovers prostrate at her feet. 

Clytemnestra's damning act is motherhood, a tie that binds beyond the mortal realm. She smiles for Cassandra's knowing eyes, all of her teeth on show. 

She's mad, and she is screaming, and Cassandra aches in the ribs.

  
  
  
  


Agamenon's hands then - they are too rough, hold her too tightly, like a mark upon her body is a statement of belonging.

Cassandra becomes Helen, a trophy in the shape of womanhood. Cassandra becomes a lamb, a perfect holy slaughter. 

  
  
  
  


Cassandra is crying in a room that is her own, if anything in this country could possibly bend to her ownership. 

Cassandra is crying in a room in which she belongs the way the bed does, the way the chest curled beneath it does. 

Cassandra is crying because she is supposed to cry, and Clytemnestra lingers in the doorway, pity in her eyes, one arm curled behind her back.

"I'm sorry," Cassandra says, because she is, because she saw it all and could not will her hands strong enough to stop it. 

Clytemnestra presses her lips together. "You shouldn't be. He isn't." She comes closer, uncurls the knife from behind her back. "Did he fuck you here?" She holds the knife between Cassandra's legs, the point pressing neatly through the pale fabric of her tunic. "In our daughter's childhood bed?"

Cassandra nods, because it's true, or because he will, because she remembers it, even if it hasn't happened. "I don't like the way men touch me," she says, to say something. 

Clytemnestra laughs and drops the knife. "He hasn't shattered you, yet, then. There's still some struggle in the animal."

Cassandra laughs, too, because that's what madwomen do. "I was already shattered. I am always shattering."

Clytemnestra tucks Cassandra's hair back, and then pulls it, harshly, curls her fist in the tangle. "You are an affront to the sacredness of my marriage," she tells her, and does not let her fingers go.

Cassandra cries, tears spilling down her cheeks and says, "So spoil me for him."

  
  
  
  


They fuck in the marriage bed, because that's more sinful and less sorrowful. 

Cassandra repeats what she learned on Helen, the curl of her tongue, the clenching heat around her curled fingers, pressing unrelenting at the place Clytemnestra pulses for her.

But she is not Helen, does not sigh and arch back, a delicate lily bowing in the absence of sun. 

Clytemnestra holds her, her fingers tight in Cassandra's hair. Clytemnestra takes her, not harshly, not painfully, but decidedly. She bruises, like he did, but when she does there's a sweetness, something that makes Cassandra go warm inside. When she cries out she keeps moving against Cassandra's mouth, teasing out every last fissure of pleasure to be found there. 

They fuck in the marriage bed, because it is a marriage, one of fury and one of resonance and one which will not end happily but will end decisively.

Clytemnestra holds her open with her shoulders, lightly scrapes at her womanhood with both tongue and teeth and Cassandra unravels for her, if she was anything more than golden thread besides.

  
  
  
  


It's an old story -

Cassandra's damning act is wanting. She wants to know, she wants to feel, she wants to taste. 

"Kiss me," she tells Clytemnestra, the knife still beside them on the bed. "Before you do it. And kiss him, too. Let him taste us, intertwined, for his eternity in Hades."

"He will _choke_ on it," Clytemnestra replies.

Clytemnestra runs her fingers through Cassandra's hair, and Cassandra thinks of Helen, golden, and soft upon all of her edges. They are three, and they are one, wives, lovers, objects and fury. 

They are women.

What a horrid thing to be.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr! [@bohemicns](http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com), let's chat!


End file.
